Reading Vietnam: A New History. The author has an apologia/explanation for why he is focusing not just on European colonialism, but the history of what became Vietnam back to the first contacts with Han China (with some perfunctory archaeological passages). This is great in theory, but from what I have read so far we’re going to have a tryst with the French sooner than later. So I don’t think he really delivered here (though perhaps “normal” people want to read about evil European colonialism immediately?).
By coincidence, there is a Ken Burns documentary on the Vietnam War now. One of my friends from when I was a kid had (has) a dad who was a Vietnam vet. He’d have night terrors. Only now do I realize how recently in the past it was for him back in the 1980s.
I did enjoy The Best and the Brightest.
Sent out my second newsletter. Here’s a stat that I divulged: more than 50% of traffic to this site is directly due to Google+Twitter+Facebook. In 2011 it was 35%. Much of the difference is due to the decline in RSS feeds, and the rise of mobile.
Why is Twitter not what it was in the early 2010s? I think part of it is that there are too many people on Twitter, and the average user is less intelligent overall. Unlike Facebook on Twitter the “genius” is anyone can talk to you. This is a problem.
The grandmaster of Mormon dweeb fantasy (I say this affectionately) Brandon Sanderson is coming out with the third book in his projected ten book Stormlight Archive series.
I’m at peace with the likelihood that I won’t finish this series. Sanderson is a great world-builder, so I’m looking at these books more as fictional ethnographies. Just along for a short ride.
Finally in the homestretch of A New History of Western Philosophy. After the classical period I haven’t really enjoyed this book, it was a slog. I began to read it at the same time as I read Consciousness and the Brain, which I finished in a week. Two years on I’m finally finishing the other book I started then.
Finally, again I highly recommend The Fortunes of Africa. Great read. I do have to say that it was hard not to be particularly appalled by Arab slave traders. It’s not like the European trade isn’t appalling, but that’s widely known. In contrast the driving of black Africans across the Sahara is less in the Western consciousness.
I recently started “After Tamerlane” and the opening also came across as somewhat apologetic. But the book is focused on empires and the period of time in which certain European countries expanded their reach.
I did enjoy The Best and the Brightest.
You are probably aware, but Halberstam had his own agenda as well and was not exactly an unbiased observer and analyst of what went wrong in Vietnam and what should have been done instead.
Sad News: Nabeel Qureshi has passed away, aged 34.
I did not know him personally ; my knowledge of him is through his YT videos and that of his friend David Wood.
While I am a non-theist, I enjoyed his videos . The videos conveyed a soft-spoken and kind person.
Looking for a relatively easy-to-digest (for non-specialists) book on viruses and their interaction with other forms of life (out of personal interest). I’ve already read the short intro by Carl Zimmer. Tried “Virolution” but couldn’t get past the author’s tone and approach. Anyone have a recommendation?
Coincidentally, I was reading a piece that mentions KB Vietnam documentary
https://warontherocks.com/2017/09/facts-about-the-vietnam-war-part-i-they-didnt-fight-with-one-hand-tied-behind-their-backs/
I have nothing but dread and foreboding for any Ken Burns documentary. I assume that it will be composed of hours of achingly dull interviews with Doris Kearns Goodwin and Shelby Foote, with a soundtrack of faux antique banjo music.
I have nothing but dread and foreboding for any Ken Burns documentary.
Maybe you shouldn’t watch it.
You are probably aware, but Halberstam had his own agenda as well and was not exactly an unbiased observer and analyst of what went wrong in Vietnam and what should have been done instead.
oh, ho chi minh wasn’t a altruistic nationalism for whom communism was just a secondary thing? 😉 but yes. this stuff needs to be read with acknowledgment of agendas in mind….
iffen: not to worry. I will run the other way just as fast as my little feet will carry me.
I am just sad to think that Burns will once again contribute the general increase of ennui in the universe.
By the time that the US became heavily involved in Vietnam, Ho (& Giap) had been kicked upstairs and the 2 Le‘s – Le Duan and Le Duc Tho – were running things in the North. This was not understood in the West until recently. See Lien-Hang T. Nguyen’s Hanoi’s War. (IIRC, she is an American whose parents were boat people who came to this country a year or 2 before she was born).
I’m going to skim Stormlight #3 after checking it out from the library. Stormlight #2 really left me cold (I skimmed to the ending after reading a few hundred pages into it), and even Stormlight #1 was only okay.
I got to respect Sanderson’s writing speed and process, though. He produces an astonishing amount of novels at a fairly solid level of quality, even if nothing he’s written is up there with George RR Martin (for example).
Just a RIP to Nabeel Quershi as well, cancer is one of the most dreaded of conditions and like other slow deaths takes a toll on both the patient as well as family and friends. Ironically the treatment is toxic and we accept that their will be adverse side effects along with the disease itself. For all who have lost loved ones, or who are facing a not so gentle mortality, though it will not soften your pain or grief, but I would like to share this quote from LOTR:
“PIPPIN: I didn’t think it would end this way.
GANDALF: End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.
PIPPIN: What? Gandalf? See what?
GANDALF: White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.
PIPPIN: Well, that isn’t so bad.
GANDALF: No. No, it isn’t.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Walter: once again contribute the general increase of ennui in the universe
I plan to watch it. I have watched two of his, The Civil War and Baseball, and as TV documentaries go, I thought that they were pretty good.
There is an actual time and space limitation for documentaries, but how can we know the quality of what is being crowded out? Something of greater or lesser quality?
I bought the Burns doc yesterday (only 18 hours??), it was $50 but I like to support his work (though his political opinions are annoying.)
As a consequence I’ve decided to try “Kissinger: A Biography” while avoiding the Nial Ferguson bio of him, I don’t trust his work. I will try “Best and Brightest.”
Been using #longreads search on twitter, you can find lots of gold nuggets very efficiently. Found about 15 yesterday, including this one:
America’s secret role in the Rwandan genocide
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/sep/12/americas-secret-role-in-the-rwandan-genocide?CMP=share_btn_tw
I’m a brain scientist and I let my son play football
https://sports.yahoo.com/im-brain-scientist-let-son-play-football-135727314.html
“In managerial society, according to Burnham, a technocratic elite of credentialed managers, exercising power through enlarged corporate and government bureaucracies, would occupy the commanding heights of the economy, politics, and culture. Private property would not disappear, but the state nonetheless would exercise a dominant role in the economy, and social and political arrangements would be radically altered. The managerial economy would be categorically distinct from previous forms of entrepreneurial capitalism, and the managerial regime would not be democratic or classically liberal in its essential characteristics. Although any work of this type will contain some obsolete projections, the contemporary reader will find many of Burnham’s predictions uncannily prescient.”
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/02/james-burnhams-managerial-elite/
Wow! He wrote this in 1941.
It’s not a big deal, but your webserver has a bug. It often has a “Database Error” and when it does, it still responds 200 OK, even though things are not OK. It should respond 5xx; most choose 503.